There was
little in Abraham Lincoln's brief congressional career that
distinguished him as a politician bound for greatness. As William
C. Harris observes in his new book, Lincoln's Rise to the
Presidency, after Lincoln's single term in the U.S. House of
Representatives ended in 1849, he "seemed destined for political
obscurity" (57). Despite being an early and enthusiastic supporter
of Zachary Taylor's presidential candidacy, Lincoln was
disappointed by his lack of influence when the new administration
began distributing the patronage. No one, including Lincoln, could
have imagined that in twelve years he would be inaugurated as
president during the greatest crisis in the history of the
republic. How was Lincoln able to go from a Whig lawyer virtually
unknown outside of Illinois to the presidential nominee of a new
party that was perceived as such a threat to the South that his
election alone prompted seven states to renounce their allegiance
to the Union? Lincoln's meteoric rise to prominence on the national
political stage during the 1850s has long been a subject of
interest for students of Lincoln and of the causes of the Civil
War. Now, Harris and John C. Waugh, in his book One Man Great
Enough, attempt to shed new light on this crucial aspect of
Lincoln's development.

Building upon the argument in his
prize-winning book on Lincoln and Reconstruction, Harris defines
Lincoln as a conservative, and he claims that Lincoln's
"conservative strategy against slavery" enabled him to emerge as a
nationally recognized leader of the Republican Party (1). Harris
takes issue with scholars who have described Lincoln as a
"moderate" opponent of slavery because that term was not applied to
politicians during Lincoln's time, and it fails to place Lincoln's
ideas in an appropriate historical context. Rather, Harris accepts
Lincoln's own description of himself as a conservative and defines
Lincoln's brand of conservatism as an ideology that "embodied a
progressive spirit that placed a premium upon equality of
opportunity for all and viewed slavery as morally wrong" (2).
According to Harris, Lincoln perceived slavery as "the great
obstacle to the fulfillment of the Founders' purposes for America,"
and his opposition to slavery was therefore anchored in a
conservative framework that sought a return to the principles and
intentions of the Founding Fathers (2–3). As Harris
demonstrates, Lincoln claimed on numerous occasions during the
1850s that the Declaration of Independence was more than simply a
document that justified separation from Great Britain. For Lincoln,
the Declaration represented a set of principles that transcended
time and space. Lincoln's expansive reading of the Declaration held
that the Founding Fathers intended for the proposition that "all
men are created equal" to apply to all men. As Lincoln
stated in a July 10, 1858 speech at Chicago, this assertion of
equality was "the electric cord in that Declaration that links the
hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link
those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the
minds of men throughout the world."[1] While Lincoln
frequently invoked the Founding Fathers and claimed he was only
seeking to restore what proponents of slavery threatened, the
conservative label may not sufficiently encapsulate the nuances and
potential implications of Lincoln's rhetoric.

There is abundant evidence, however, of
Lincoln's seemingly conservative opposition to slavery. Harris
suggests that the "germ" of this opposition might be contained in
the March 3, 1837, protest that Lincoln and Dan Stone registered in
the Illinois House of Representatives (18). In explaining why they
had voted against resolutions that condemned abolitionists and
acknowledged a "sacred" right to own slaves guaranteed by the
Constitution, Lincoln and Stone claimed that slavery was an
institution "founded on both injustice and bad policy" but blamed
abolitionist agitation for making the problem worse. Waugh also
sees great significance in the protest, as he devotes the prologue
of his book to it and concludes that the House protest was where
Lincoln's "road to the Civil War" began. Waugh and Harris interpret
the protest as evidence not only of Lincoln's consistent moral
opposition to slavery but also of his aversion to radical
abolitionism and his belief that the federal government had no
authority to interfere with slavery in the states. Despite the
significance that Harris and Waugh attach to the 1837 document,
they erroneously refer to it as a "resolution." Harris also
incorrectly claims that the measure was "overwhelmingly defeated in
the legislature" (18), when in fact Lincoln and Stone were
exercising a privilege that allowed them to file a protest in the
official House Journal that explained why they had voted
against the resolutions.

Lincoln was apparently under no external
pressure either to vote against the 1837 resolutions on slavery or
to clarify the reasons for his opposition. Given the political
climate in Illinois, Harris and Waugh point out that Lincoln took a
risk by making his moral opposition to slavery known. The protest
indicates that Lincoln was willing to take a principled stand even
if it was not necessarily in his best political interests to do so.
It also supports Lincoln's later claims that he had "always hated
slavery." Yet Lincoln also acknowledged that prior to the passage
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he had "been quiet" about slavery and
viewed it as a "minor question" because he "believed that everybody
was against it."[2] By his own admission, Lincoln
evinced little interest in the contentious issue of Texas
annexation, and he did not join with opponents of the Mexican War
who viewed the conflict as further evidence of a slave-power
conspiracy.

As a member of the Thirtieth Congress
Lincoln served largely as a spectator during the rather frequent
and often heated debates that occurred over the issue of slavery.
He voted for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prevented slavery
from expanding into any territory gained from Mexico, but he
generally opposed the efforts of the few abolitionists in the House
to inject their agenda into the proceedings. Lincoln was appalled
by the presence of slavery in the nation's capital, yet he voted
against resolutions to repeal all laws related to slavery in
Washington and to the conducting of a referendum on slavery that
would have allowed the District's adult male residents, including
African Americans, to participate.

In the 1837 protest Lincoln claimed that
Congress had the authority to abolish slavery in Washington, D.C.,
provided the measure was approved by the District's citizens. Near
the end of his term in Congress he drafted a plan for gradual,
compensated emancipation in Washington that would have freed
children born to enslaved mothers after January 1, 1850. Those born
prior to that date could be emancipated if their owners accepted
payment from the federal government. The plan required local
authorities to apprehend fugitive slaves, allowed federal employees
from slave states to bring personal servants into the capital, and
would not take effect unless it was approved by the District's
white male citizens. Lincoln did not formally introduce his plan
after learning that local support for the measure had eroded due to
the efforts of some of his Southern colleagues. Nevertheless, Waugh
sees this as a "notable antislavery statement" (163). Harris, on
the other hand, writes that Lincoln's attempt to reach a compromise
"seemed to have conceded a great deal of moral weight on the issue"
(54). Joshua Giddings, as Harris admits, did not see it that way
and praised Lincoln's proposal in 1860. Harris doubts the plan had
any real chance of success and concludes that it provides evidence
of Lincoln's "subordination of the slavery issue to Whig party
unity and to practical political realities" (55). While that may be
true, the episode also further demonstrates Lincoln's willingness
to try and eradicate a wrong even when there was no apparent
pressure on him to take such action.

Unlike Harris, who agrees with Don E.
Fehrenbacher's conclusion that Lincoln's "retirement" from politics
between 1849 and 1854 has been exaggerated, Waugh overstates the
level of Lincoln's disengagement. After mentioning Lincoln's 1848
visit to Niagara Falls, Waugh claims that the "Niagara of his
ambition had run dry" (167). Though Lincoln focused much of his
energy on his law practice during this period, his 1852 eulogy of
Henry Clay provides abundant proof that his political ambition had
not diminished. Lincoln praised Clay's efforts to preserve the
Union and did not express any dissatisfaction with the Compromise
of 1850, even though the New Mexico and Utah territories were
organized without reference to slavery. The new fugitive slave law
proved to be the most controversial aspect of the compromise.
Considering the various crises that arose as a result of this
draconian measure, which Lincoln defended as a constitutional
necessity, one must question whether he was being a bit
disingenuous when he claimed that slavery was on the path to
ultimate extinction before Stephen A. Douglas engineered the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Lincoln praised Clay's
efforts to have Kentucky enact a gradual emancipation law; however,
he was also aware that Clay's proposal had made little headway. The
South was not only less inclined to consider emancipation but was
also even more determined to obtain guarantees that its peculiar
institution would be protected by the federal government. The
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was one such assurance, and while
African Americans in the North formed vigilance committees and
orators denounced the law as effectively nationalizing slavery,
Lincoln's acceptance of the act provides perhaps the most
convincing support of Harris's contention that Lincoln's opposition
to slavery was grounded in conservatism.

According to Lincoln, the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act "aroused" him "as he had never been before."
Why had Lincoln not objected to a new fugitive slave law and the
prospect of slavery expanding to New Mexico and Utah, yet was so
troubled by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise line that
prohibited the extension of slavery into the remaining territory
from the Louisiana Purchase that lay above 36 degrees, 30 minutes
north latitude? Waugh and Harris steer a middle course in
explaining Lincoln's motives for taking the stump in 1854, as they
see the decision as a product of both genuine conviction and
ambition. In analyzing Lincoln's Peoria speech of October 16, 1854,
Harris argues that Lincoln's moral condemnation of slavery was
coupled with "a conservative position on the laws protecting the
institution and on the issue of black equality" (70). Harris sees
Lincoln as primarily concerned with avoiding any association with
radical abolitionism, in order to attract as many as possible to
the anti-Nebraska standard. Lincoln's conciliatory language
regarding the South and his assurances that he was only seeking a
restoration of the Missouri Compromise line and not the repeal of
the Fugitive Slave Act or the abolition of slavery in the states,
support that interpretation. Lincoln's appeal to the legacy of the
Founding Fathers and Declaration of Independence would also seem to
strengthen the case for Lincoln's conservatism, yet in his critique
of popular sovereignty Lincoln asserted that African Americans were
human beings and therefore entitled to the same natural rights as
persons of European descent. The idea that African Americans were
included in the Declaration's proposition that "all men are created
equal" was anything but a conservative argument in 1854 and one
that radical abolitionists had been making for years.

Lincoln's lofty rhetoric regarding the
natural equality of all men made him vulnerable to attacks from
opponents who charged that he was a proponent of the complete
social and political equality of the races. Lincoln responded by
drawing a distinction between natural rights and civil rights. On
numerous occasions he denied that he was in favor of elevating
African Americans to a position of complete equality and claimed
that just because he did not want an African American woman for a
slave did not mean that he wanted her as a wife. Lincoln's views on
race have attracted much attention in recent years, and while both
Harris and Waugh acknowledge that Lincoln advocated colonization
(Waugh confusingly refers to it as "recolonization") as a solution
to the race problem, Harris is much more critical of Lincoln than
Waugh. Though Harris eschews the term "moderate" because it was not
applied to politicians in Lincoln's day, he has no such
reservations about applying the term "racist" to Lincoln's
statements, which he also characterizes as "deplorable" and
"embarrassing" (4). Harris qualifies this assessment by pointing
out that "in the context of racial sentiment in Illinois" Lincoln's
views on race were "mild and open to change" (86). Harris also does
not believe that Lincoln was "the conniving racist that black
writer Lerone Bennett and other modern critics have labeled him"
(86). In discussing the oft-quoted and now infamous remarks Lincoln
made on race in his debate with Douglas at Charleston, Harris
argues that Lincoln was attempting to assure conservatives that he
was not a radical advocate of racial equality, an issue which he
"could not appear to equivocate" on in central Illinois (131).
Given the importance that is currently placed on Lincoln's
statement at Charleston, it is curious that Waugh fails to mention
it in his discussion of the Charleston debate.

By no means should Lincoln be given a pass
for his remarks at Charleston or for some of his other comments on
race, but it would be helpful if Harris further contextualized
Lincoln's position by providing some additional evidence of what
his Democratic opponents were saying. One of Douglas's primary
modes of attack against Lincoln and the "Black Republicans" was
that they favored racial amalgamation—a position that was
well beyond the pale throughout Illinois and rest of the country in
the 1850s and a charge Lincoln could not afford to go unanswered.
Harris follows Douglas in claiming that Lincoln's statements
changed depending upon his location in the state. Since Charleston
was in the vital central region of Illinois, Harris reasons that
Lincoln could not afford to assert that African Americans were
included in the Declaration. Though Lincoln did not make this point
at Charleston, he made it in other places throughout central
Illinois, including a notable speech a few weeks prior at
Lewistown. Following the debate at Charleston, Lincoln did not
relent from his position that African Americans were entitled to
natural rights, and he placed an even greater emphasis upon slavery
as a moral issue than he had earlier in the campaign. Lincoln's
remarks at Charleston and other similar statements on race are
regrettable and indefensible today, but his inclusive
interpretation of the Declaration, though ostensibly based upon a
conservative appeal to the past, raised a variety of possibilities
for change.

Just as there was no apparent pressure to
issue a protest in 1837 or develop a plan to end slavery in
Washington, Lincoln did not need to make a case for the natural
rights of African Americans in order to combat Douglas's doctrine
of popular sovereignty, especially since he claimed he was only in
favor of restricting the spread of slavery into the territories. As
evidenced by the House Divided speech, Lincoln's rhetoric far
exceeded this modest proposition. Harris maintains that the House
Divided speech "did not contradict his earlier conservative
position on slavery" since Lincoln did not advocate any measures to
interfere with slavery in the states (94). Granted Lincoln was
vague on the details, but was it a truly conservative position to
assert that the country could not endure permanently half slave and
half free and predict that slavery would either face "ultimate
extinction" or become lawful everywhere? These propositions left
little room for compromise and did not seek to perpetuate the
status quo. The House Divided speech, as Harris points out,
emphasized the idea that the Democratic policy on slavery, if
allowed to go unchecked, would result in the nationalization of
slavery. Harris is quite right that Lincoln was naïve to
suggest that slavery would die a natural death if it were contained
to the states where it already existed, but Harris does not seem to
take Lincoln's fears of slavery being nationalized as seriously as
Lincoln did. Beginning in 1854, Lincoln attacked Douglas's alleged
indifference to slavery as a "lullaby" argument that was preparing
the North to accept slavery everywhere. After all, if people
believed there was no real distinction between an African American
slave and any other species of property, such as a hog or
cranberries, then why should anyone care whether slavery was voted
up or down? While Lincoln warned of the likelihood of a sequel to
the Dred Scott decision that would have made slavery legal in the
states, Harris doubts the Taney court would have rendered such a
ruling. Regardless, events in Kansas and Dred Scott only confirmed
Lincoln's belief that the country was on a dangerous path and in
dire need of a course correction.

As Lincoln stated in the final joint debate
with Douglas at Alton, the "real issue" in the campaign was the
"eternal struggle" between right and wrong—the "common right
of humanity" versus the "tyrannical principle" that one man may
rule over another without his consent.[3] He was unwilling
to propose measures to ameliorate the condition of African
Americans and advised Republicans not to make an issue of the
Fugitive Slave Act, yet he clearly believed the country was at a
vital crossroads. Perhaps Lincoln's greatest talent and what made
him both attractive to Republicans and frightening to slaveholding
Southerners was his ability to combine a conservative appeal to the
past with an uncompromising vision of the future. In his Cooper
Union speech, for example, Lincoln disavowed John Brown and argued
that his own position on slavery was truly conservative because it
was in accordance with that of the Founding Fathers. According to
Lincoln's view, the Founders intended slavery to end and placed it
on the course of ultimate extinction. This interpretation of the
Founding remains open for debate, and Lincoln was purposefully
vague on how the end of slavery would come about. Despite his
attempts to assure Southerners that it would happen without
Republican interference with slavery in the states, he also urged
Republicans not to surrender their conviction that slavery was
wrong. Something had to give, and while Harris makes a valid point
that Lincoln underestimated the seriousness of Southern threats to
secede, he overestimates the consistency of Lincoln's "goodwill"
towards the South. There is a clear difference between Lincoln's
attitude regarding the South in 1854, when he claimed that
Northerners would not behave any differently if placed in similar
circumstances, and 1860 when he chastised Southerners for
misrepresenting the Republican position and making threats to
destroy the Union if a Republican were elected president.

As the Union began to fall apart following
the November 1860 presidential election, Lincoln wrote few letters
and said very little publicly prior to his inauguration. Privately,
Lincoln urged Republicans in Congress not to compromise on the
issue of slavery in the territories, for as he wrote to Lyman
Trumbull on December 10, 1860: "The tug has to come, & better
now, than any time hereafter."[4] While Harris is critical
of Lincoln's naivete regarding the secession crisis and believes
"no compromise would have satisfied the lower southern states," he
questions the wisdom of the president-elect's "masterly inactivity"
during the secession winter. Harris believes that Lincoln should
have followed the advice of some of his correspondents and issued
"a carefully worded printed declaration" that would have reassured
people of his conservative intentions regarding slavery in the
states (5, 294–95). According to Harris, such a document
"could have had a salutary effect upon opinion in the upper and
border South" (295). This is a debatable point, and Harris does not
mention that Lincoln prepared such a document following a
conference with Duff Green, who visited Springfield on behalf of
President Buchanan. In his statement, Lincoln acknowledged the
"right of each state to order and control its own domestic
institutions according to its own judgment exclusively" as
"essential to that balance of powers, on which the perfection, and
endurance of our political fabric depends." Lincoln gave Green
permission to publish the document if six U.S. senators from the
Deep South signed a declaration urging all efforts at secession to
cease "until some act, deemed to be violative of our rights, shall
be done by the incoming administration."
[5] Though Lincoln may have maintained a vain hope
that the secession crisis could be resolved without violence, the
Duff Green incident further demonstrates his political acuity and
his unwillingness to be bullied into a corner.

Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency
offers a thorough and provocative account of Lincoln's path from
little known ex-congressman to the White House. Following an
introductory chapter on Lincoln's early life that includes a
refutation of C. A. Tripp's thesis concerning Lincoln's sexuality,
Harris focuses on the period from Lincoln's time in Congress to his
inauguration on March 4, 1861. The book includes chapters devoted
to Lincoln's term in Congress; his political revival in the early
1850s; the Lincoln-Douglas Debates; the 1860 Republican national
convention; the presidential campaign; the selection of cabinet
members; Lincoln's activities during the secession crisis; and his
journey from Springfield to Washington in February 1861. Harris
displays a command of the secondary literature and important
primary source collections. Much of the book is drawn from research
in The Collected Works and the online edition of the Lincoln
Papers at the Library Congress (an incorrect URL for this
collection is given in the end notes). The scope of Harris's work
and his conclusions make Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency an
ideal complement to other key books on the topic, particularly
Robert W. Johannsen's Lincoln, the South and Slavery: The
Political Dimension (1991) and Don E. Fehrenbacher's Prelude
to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's (1962). As Harris's
numerous citations of Prelude to Greatness indicate,
Fehrenbacher's work remains the standard after more than forty
years.

While Harris's work will be of interest to
both scholars and Lincoln enthusiasts, Waugh's colloquial style and
frequent use of quotations from both Lincoln and his contemporaries
indicate that his book was written with a more general audience in
mind. Waugh relies a great deal upon Fehrenbacher's Recollected
Words and Wilson and Davis's Herndon's Informants, but
he does not explain his criteria for assessing the veracity of
these recollections, and he apparently accepted this reminiscent
material uncritically. One Man Great Enough covers a lot of
ground and is essentially a biography of Lincoln that begins with
his youth and concludes shortly after his inauguration in 1861.
Those with some prior knowledge of the subject may be frustrated by
the paucity of new insight, primarily a consequence of the book's
brisk pace. Waugh attempts to cover so much ground that complex
issues such as the Lecompton Constitution, Lincoln's support of the
1850 Fugitive Slave Act, and Douglas's shifting position on the
Missouri Compromise cannot be explained or analyzed in much depth.
The book is also hampered by the frequency of minor errors, which
individually do not amount to much, but collectively lead one to
conclude that the editing process was a bit slipshod. Lincoln
turned thirty-two in 1841, not thirty-three (105); the
Lincoln-Douglas Debates were each three hours in length, not six
(281); and the Missouri Compromise did not occur "a third of a
decade" after the Northwest Ordinance was approved (210). There is
also some confusion regarding Denton Offutt's first name, the name
of the proprietor of the Washington boardinghouse where Lincoln
stayed during his time in Congress, and the middle initials of
William H. Herndon, John M. Palmer, and Herschel V. Johnson (27,
153, 169, 316, 341). Stephen Douglas makes regular appearances
throughout the book, and one wonders if Waugh initially set out to
write a dual biography of Lincoln and his long-time rival. Given
the important role Douglas played in Lincoln's political
development, Waugh's comparisons are instructive, and considering
both Waugh's target audience and Douglas's current place in popular
memory, it is unfortunate that the Little Giant does not have an
even larger presence in the work.

Waugh's Lincoln is a man destined for
greatness, but his frequent use of Lincoln's words and those of
people who knew him brings Lincoln alive in a way that should
appeal to readers who know only the Lincoln that one encounters at
the Greek temple in Washington, D.C. Harris offers a more focused
and nuanced interpretation of Lincoln's rise to the presidency that
was anything but preordained. His thesis regarding Lincoln's
conservative strategy against slavery is stimulating and merits
careful consideration from Lincoln students. While Lincoln framed
much of his criticism of slavery in conservative terms, his strong
moral condemnation of slavery, combined with his growing belief
that the nation must become either all slave or all free, indicate
that he envisioned a republic that would be a very different place
than the one established by the Founding Fathers.